The media obsession with UKIP is painting a highly misleading picture of what is actually going to happen at the General Election

Britain is obsessed with Nigel Farage. The pint-waving,covert
coat-wearing, anti-establishment shtick-spouting activities of
the UK Independence Party leader are exhaustively covered by
friend and foe alike. Few other parties of its size could afford
such blanket advertising (especially those with the
limited resources of UKIP).

In both cases, and in the case of most of these types of
predictions, the phrases "as many as" and "up to" are doing an
awful lot of work to stretch whatever truth there may be to the
stories as thinly as it will go.

In reality UKIP are not "on course" to win anything like 16
seats, let alone 30. The average estimate of pollsters at the
moment is that the party will take between 4-5 seats in May. This
would at least double the two MPs it currently boasts in
Conservative defectors Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, but
you would hardly call it a political landslide.

Most importantly, even if the election is as close as people
currently predict, with neither the Conservatives nor Labour able
to achieve a majority, the chances of UKIP joining a coalition
are vanishingly small. Here's how the polls currently lie
(according to Election
Forecast UK):

The projection of a single solitary seat for UKIP — a net loss of
a seat — reflects the party's fall in the polls over recent weeks
from the high to low teens, although the forecast is subject to a
great deal of uncertainty. The party still looks set to get
between 7.5%-13.6% of the national vote and with candidates
polling well at local level in a number of key constituencies it
could yet surprise on the upside come election night.

Let's assume though that the most optimistic interpretation of
the polls are right, and Farage's troops take six seats in May.
It would undoubtedly be a shock for the Westminster establishment
so used to two-and-a-half-party politics that it neglected to
even notice the rise of alternative parties until the last few
years thrust them only the national stage.

But what would it actually mean for the next government?

Not a great deal. For Labour to cross the 326 seat line for a
majority in the House of Commons either a
coalition with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National
Party (275+26+39 = 340), or a minority Labour government reliant
on the other two for votes looks overwhelming like the most
likely options at this stage.

For the Conservatives, well the outlook just doesn't look so
good. A renewed coalition with the Lib Dems might sneak them over
the 300 seat mark but it is highly unlikely to push it up to a
majority. Even with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party
and our imagined six UKIP MPs added to the mix the Tories still
look odds on to fall short of that 326 figure (not least because
those UKIP seats are likely to come at Tory cost).

So why the obsession with a party that simply doesn't look like
it's going to make the difference?

Firstly, it speaks to the paranoia of an establishment that is
going to see seats considered safe suddenly challenged by upstart
parties. This is a problem because the electoral machines of the
major parties have become used to focusing on key battle grounds,
and have largely ignored seats where they thought their lead was
untouchable by other mainstream parties.

As the Conservatives saw with their by-election defeat in
Rochester & Strood, however, such complacency comes at a very
high cost. With UKIP now narrowing the focus of its national
campaign to 12 target seats, arranging public meetings ward by
ward to drum up local support, there is reason to be concerned
that a lack of consideration for their base could cost mainstream
parties at a time when every seat matters.

Secondly, what political commentators are starting to realise is
that UKIP's campaign is no longer about 2015, or at least no
longer just about 2015. A few high profile wins in May could
provide a platform for the long march to 2020 during which time
the party could attempt to gain a foothold in other areas outside
of its South East coastal powerbase.

As Matthew Goodwin, a professor at the University of
Nottingham and the author of the book "Revolt on the Right,"
pointed out at an event this morning hosted by Ladbroke's, the
demographic profile across large parts of Wales and the north of
England map closely to constituencies where UKIP has performed
strongest. Indeed, he predicts that UKIP could place second
behind Labour candidates in as many as 60 seats in the north,
which would put huge pressure on Labour to reconnect with its
working class base and provide an incentive for moribund
Conservative associations in the north to jump ship.

But these worries reflect the paranoia of the political classes
over how to reverse the trend of an electorate losing faith in
mainstream politics more than it speaks to political realities of
the next few months. And while the media beats its chest at the
gates about the rise of UKIP, the SNP have found the back door to
the Palace of Westminster has been left wide open. All they have
to do in May is walk through it.